Phantasia and Mental images: Neoplatonist interpretations of de an/ma, 3. 3

Abstract

Abstract Aristotle’s treatment of phantasia in De anima, 3. 3, is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle there seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind which cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought, a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call ‘imagination’, at least has a good deal in common with it; but tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is hard to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been a number of recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle’s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere.1 I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination; in all three cases the way they see Aristotle’s position is affected by the account of imagination which they themselves favour.